Gia Allemand's boyfriend speaks out for first time since her suicide

posted by Suzy Byrne | Yahoo! omg!
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3 years ago

(Yahoo!) - Ryan Anderson is struggling to make sense of Gia Allemand's death.

While attending a media event for his NBA team, the New Orleans Pelicans player broke his silence about the August suicide of his girlfriend, who appeared on "The Bachelor" and "Bachelor Pad."

"Every day is a challenge," Anderson told the Times-Picayune newspaper on Monday. "It helps to be here. My family's with me. To be here with my teammates really helps a lot, but it's a roller coaster."

The 25-year-old sports star was the one who found the unconscious Allemand in her apartment. He performed CPR on her until paramedics arrived, but it was too late. The brunette fitness instructor was removed from life support at University Hospital in New Orleans two days later.

"Something like that just doesn't happen for no reason, and I know that ... there's ... a huge plan here ...," Anderson told the paper, breaking into tears. "A lot of people are going to be helped from this."

He went on to share that he has been working with Allemand's mother, Donna Micheletti, to help establish a foundation in the reality TV star's name. It's only in preliminary stages now, but he expects it to change the lives of many.

"We have a huge plan to do something great, great in her name that's going to help a lot of people. This is a topic that is not talked about enough; it is a huge problem," he said of Allemand's depression.

"I wasn't planning on saying all this but let's be honest here," he continued. "We live in a society now where you've got to live up to something, you've got to be a certain person, and you're not going to be accepted. And every single person, every single person has something special about them. That's what I want to be my goal here: To have everybody here know that they're not alone. Whatever you're going through in life, you're not alone."

Anderson and Allemand started dating in 2011, but were going through a rocky time. During an appearance on "Dr. Phil," Allemand's mother revealed that the couple had a fight just prior to her daughter's death during which the sports star said he no longer loved her. Allemand then returned home and hanged herself while on telephone with her mom.

"She could not see clearly," her mother said. "It was like night and day. It would come out of nowhere. All of a sudden, something would click in there and she would say, 'This isn't right. He doesn't love me."